George Harris
George P Harris

First post:
Jan 27, 2018 Latest post:
Feb 18, 2018

Welcome to our CaringBridge website for our dad George Harris. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place, and we really appreciate your support and words of encouragement. The grandchildren in our family call dad Poppi, and so he is Poppi to all of us. Poppi was admitted to the emergency department on January 11, 2018 for what appeared to be an obstructed bowel. He had emergency surgery to remove the obstruction, but instead they found that his intestines had stopped working and were on the verge of rupturing. His surgeon has reinforced the gravity of the situation to him and to us, because he was close to dying even on the operating table. According to the doctors, Poppi's long-time use of pain medicine to manage chronic back pain has caused his intestinal tract to stop functioning. Unfortunately, when he arrived at the Emergency Department he was already quite weak from managing his chronic pain. This has been a very difficult past six months for dad, and so his current situation is made worse due to his weakened condition. At this point Poppi has been in the hospital for over two weeks and is still unable to eat and digest food. We are hoping that by reducing his pain medicine and getting him to walk and move, his intestines will "wake up" and allow him to take in food and nutrients, but so far it has been a challenge. The pain meds have been reduced and dad is dutifully walking the halls as much as he can, but he is unable to take in food. Both our parents, Berkeley and George, will be so glad to hear from friends via posts on this Caring Bridge page as well as texts and cards, so thank you for reaching out. Poppi is too tired to respond to calls and texts and it is too much energy for him to have visitors, but please know that he will get your messages and that he and my mom deeply appreciate all the care and concern for them both.